00:03:07.520And people are, I can tell because my follower count drops every day by, like, way too many.
00:03:12.040And I haven't posted anything controversial or, like, no strong opinions as of late.
00:03:15.940And so I can tell people are like, and it's done.
00:03:18.180And the worst part, though, is I have a black lady professional group chat on there that has been life saving, got me a lot of jobs, got me through a lot of crap, like has really helped solidify my career.
00:03:30.760And that checkmark, you know, when I first got it, I was freelance and it really boosted my profile and gave me a lot of access I didn't have previously.
00:03:39.820And I do worry about what's going to happen.
00:03:42.000You know, we're trying to as a group, we're trying to figure out, like, where do we go next?
00:03:44.840And we're just not quite sure what's going to have that same kind of connection.
00:03:51.180That's such a good point that you make about the access, particularly for folks in industries that are traditionally marginalized.
00:03:57.980It's different for us to build up a platform and it just has the stakes are different.
00:04:01.780And, you know, I'm also verified on Twitter and I do think that it's gotten me into spaces and gotten me access that I don't think I would have otherwise.
00:04:10.960And so, like, if you're an editor and I tweet something, I've gotten the DM that's like, oh, do you want to turn this into a piece for us?
00:04:17.240And I would be lying if I said that I wasn't going to miss that.
00:04:24.540Like, who wants to be on a platform that is run by someone who has made it clear that they don't really care about the safety of the folks who are showing up on a platform like Twitter?
00:04:34.500I knew it was over when he was like, I'm going to charge for verification.
00:04:38.160I was like, well, then that defeats the point of verification.
00:07:07.420Your experiences of maybe wanting to leave the platform really set us up nicely into
00:07:11.920that conversation because we know that Twitter has not always been the most secure platform,
00:07:17.060has not always delivered a very secure experience for its users.
00:07:19.980And now with Elon Musk at the helm, I think it's poised to only get worse.
00:07:24.060And FYI, we're recording this on a Friday. My understanding is Twitter is planning on rolling out this new pay to be verified system on Monday.
00:07:35.720So in just a couple of days, the same day or like just days before firing half their staff and a day before a fucking election.0.99
00:07:43.660So I'm I'm very concerned. And I think that my concerns have real historical precedent, which I want to get into right now.0.99
00:07:50.360So a classic bad actor tactic is pretending to be somebody that you're not on social media, specifically to create confusion and to stabilize online spaces, right?
00:08:00.880Like, this is probably not a surprise to you, Joelle.
00:08:03.580This is like something we all sort of innately know, right?
00:08:08.200And I think something that really just burns me up about this is that it's very much a known tactic, right?
00:08:14.960The leadership at social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have been made well aware that this is a tactic that bad actors use to threaten the security of their platforms.
00:08:23.700But they have really done fuck all to prevent it from happening.
00:08:27.420And in the case of Twitter, are maybe making it easier to happen, which is a real head scratcher.
00:08:32.800So another classic bad actor tactic is inflaming existing tensions around groups of people who are traditionally marginalized.
00:08:43.000Yeah. Who would have guessed it, right, that that would be a common tactic to destabilize communities?
00:08:49.040So what happened around End Father's Day, around 2013, 2014, what I want to talk about today, that's like one of the reasons why I think it's so important.
00:08:57.720Because it utilized both of those tactics to hijack and exploit conversations around feminism, race, and gender online.
00:09:05.260And it's really concerning because, you know, it's concerning that our social media platforms are so easily gamified in this way and that social media platforms aren't really doing anything to prevent it.
00:09:20.100To really understand what the fuck was going on with End Father's Day, you really need to understand what 4chan was calling Operation Lollipop.
00:09:28.260Lollipop. And essentially, Operation Lollipop was this campaign to create fake activist causes on0.79
00:09:34.820social media. Basically, people on 4chan, trolls, bad actors, whatever you want to call them,
00:09:40.880would pose as feminists of color. So like black feminists, brown feminists, etc. And essentially1.00
00:09:47.940try to get people to agree with these bogus campaigns they would start and just generally
00:09:53.300try to seed conflict with one another. The whole point is to create confusion, inflame tensions,
00:10:00.160generally to make feminists look like a bunch of, you know, crazy man haters whose causes have no1.00
00:10:06.020merit and who can't even agree with one another. This is so wild when you see it happen just1.00
00:10:13.160organically on your timeline where you'd be like, so here's a picture of, you know, sometimes a0.98
00:10:19.820black woman sometimes a black man using way too much like currently popular in the zeitgeist
00:10:27.000black lingo where you're like they're like yeah no cap you're like i don't know if the situation0.78
00:10:32.520necessarily calls for a no cap and yeah and then you go on their page and they follow a bunch of
00:10:38.900people but maybe only have like a handful of followers uh most of their tweets are retweets
00:10:43.900it's they become easier to spot the more you come across them organically but it's very strange to0.68
00:10:50.800be like this is a like internet blackface and it's annoying and upsetting and again ruining0.97
00:10:57.920these spaces that have you know i know some people don't agree with the idea that there's
00:11:02.660community on these spaces but i just think that for somebody who has found a great group of friends
00:11:08.720that I meet with regularly, IRL, who, you know, again, uses this space and platforms for job
00:11:16.080opportunities. Like it does feel communal to me and it does feel almost, well, it's just invasive.
00:11:23.100It's invasive to have people come into those communities and try to wreck them in that way.
00:11:27.120The reason why these bad actors pretending to be Black women were exposed is exactly what you just1.00
00:11:33.580picked up on. When they use language where you're like, I don't know if a Black person would actually1.00
00:11:38.380say no cap in this situation i don't know that a black person would actually say you know as a
00:11:44.980black i think trump is lit just those little things where you're like oh my spidey sense0.85
00:11:51.600is tingling i don't know if you're a black woman like you say you are twitter user like five five0.94
00:11:57.220six nine nine eight seven and i think this is one of the reasons why i am always kind of screaming0.54
00:12:07.020from the rooftops that this kind of disinformation and media manipulation is a clear racial and
00:12:12.920gender justice issue because bad actors and trolls know that exploiting and inflaming
00:12:17.940these legitimate like tensions and trigger points, particularly between marginalized groups,
00:12:24.120can really work because it does tap into these like legitimate traumas and baggage and anxieties
00:12:29.400that we do have. You know, the experience of being a black woman or a queer person or a trans person
00:12:33.960or really any kind of marginalized identity in the United States is often marked with these
00:12:38.940very real historical traumas and baggage. And so people who are interested in using the internet
00:12:45.500to spread chaos target marginalized people, and they do it by tapping into these existing traumas.
00:12:52.100And, you know, a good example is like, as we approach the midterm elections, the kind of
00:12:56.140disinformation that we're seeing around the election is really meant to dissuade people
00:13:00.080of color from voting. You know, they tend to do this via things like bogus images purporting to0.79
00:13:05.820show ICE making arrests of undocumented people at polling places or, you know, images warning that,
00:13:11.980oh, you know, when you go to vote, they're going to be checking if you have outstanding warrants
00:13:16.240when you do try to vote. Right. These lies that are clearly meant to tap into very real fears and
00:13:22.780anxieties that black and brown folks have around being criminalized in the United States. So it
00:13:27.120It plays on these like real traumas that we have in ways that exploit these things, these like tensions that we carry around just by virtue of being a marginalized person in the United States.
00:13:37.960yeah it's sinister when you essentially try to brainwash someone into acting in their own
00:13:45.600disinterest right particularly when we're talking about voting this idea of if you exercise your
00:13:52.760right there's a threat there and you should avoid that threat at all costs it's it's really cruel
00:14:00.120and the craziest thing is like when we see a lot of like who is participating in these acts like
00:14:07.240it's either very young kids who've been indoctrinated over many years, YouTube, fix your
00:14:13.540system, or like old people who, again, have been indoctrinated mostly by Fox News slash Fox News
00:14:21.200affiliates. And that sort of gets really under my skin to this idea of either people who should0.73
00:14:27.820know better or people who never had a chance to learn better doing so much damage, you know.
00:14:32.740I'm really glad that you framed it that way. It's sometimes difficult for me, but I always try to remember that, like, it's not necessarily the individual. It's like systems and institutions that are getting rich and profiting off of, you know, misleading individuals in this way. It can be hard to remember that when I'm like, why can't you just not fall for this? But yeah, you're exactly right.
00:14:55.400Fascism is a very effective tool that is being wielded expertly right now.
00:15:00.900It's hard because you do your instinct is to just get angry about it.
00:15:07.720But at the same time, I know my anger can't resolve the issue.0.73
00:15:11.980And so my hope is that more white mothers, if we're just being very honest about it, are figuring out ways to talk to their young sons about how to better navigate the Internet,0.70
00:15:23.720are making sure they're putting up roadblocks and interventions where necessary.0.84
00:15:27.640You know, I think that's the only way we can hope to really get ahead of this, because
00:15:32.420it seems to be a wave that isn't stopping anytime soon.
00:15:35.800Unfortunately, I think that you are correct.
00:15:38.860So when we look at End Father's Day and the kind of tensions and traumas historically1.00
00:15:43.840that that campaign really tapped into, it's this clear wedge between Black women and white
00:19:02.940And he really, like, he had, at this time, he did have a, like, pretty big footprint on online feminist spaces.
00:19:11.400He wrote about feminism for places like The Atlantic and Jezbel and some other, like, feminist sites in the sort of ecosystem of online feminism back in the 2013, 2014 era.0.61
00:19:23.440Here's a little taste of Hugo speaking at a slut walk in L.A. in 2011.
00:19:27.760For too long, there's been division in the feminist community over the issues of sexuality and sex work.0.91
00:19:33.920And that's one of the things we are here to end today.
00:19:44.160So I wrote a little speech and I can't read a speech.
00:19:47.520I have to say it is very difficult to stand up here as a man after the stories that you've just heard.
00:21:02.280Yeah, so that was his thing that I would say allowed him to kind of grow in his public profile.
00:21:11.320He wrote very openly about how when he was struggling with addiction issues,
00:21:15.340he tried to murder his girlfriend by turning on the gas stove in their apartment.0.63
00:21:20.200and he also wrote about having sexual flings with his female students when he was a professor0.99
00:21:24.760so it's interesting that he would get up on a stage at a slut walk and talk about like man0.99
00:21:30.920this myth of male weakness blah blah blah here's the other thing if you are0.97
00:21:35.980coming to a marginalized community and you are not actively a member of that marginalized community
00:21:42.720and then you speak on behalf of that marginalized community you have not fully done your work
00:21:48.640or your research like there's that time should have been given to an actual woman like any woman
00:21:56.480with any kind of sense could have taken that spot and done what you did and much much better uh that1.00
00:22:02.080is foolish and ridiculous yes absolutely and you know who didn't let any of that shit slide1.00
00:22:08.460black women they were didn't no black women have been calling this guy out for a very long time1.00
00:22:14.740And he was really able to use this behavior to amass power and a public profile in online feminist spaces for a long time.0.93
00:22:23.240When black women would speak up against him, he would like attack them pretty, pretty horribly on social media.
00:22:30.320And despite all this, he was able to really remain this kind of feminist darling writing for, you know, ostensibly feminist outlets like Jezbel that had this large white woman readership and writership.
00:22:42.640He ended up having this public meltdown on Twitter in which he all but admitted all of
00:23:02.400So all of these things that black women had been accusing him of this whole time and basically
00:23:06.420had been going ignored, he admitted in a meltdown on Twitter.
00:23:11.000But it seems like when he admitted all this in his meltdown that the white feminists and the websites who who were frequented by those white feminists, they didn't really take ownership of what they had done to allow him to build such a platform in these online feminist spaces.
00:23:30.580You know, they weren't really denouncing him like you might have expected them to.
00:23:34.660And they certainly were not, you know, seeking solidarity or trying to make amends with the women that he pretty clearly, the black women that he pretty clearly harmed.
00:23:44.440I think there was just this general sense of no accountability.
00:23:49.280And to really move forward, you got to have accountability.
00:23:52.900And so Mickey Kendall spelled it out really well in a piece that she wrote for The Guardian.
00:23:56.520Folks should really read the whole thing because it's a great piece.
00:24:47.920It was intended to be a Twitter shorthand for how often feminists of color are told1.00
00:24:52.040that the racism they experience isn't a feminist issue.
00:24:54.960The first few tweets reflect the deeply personal impact of such a long-running structural issue.0.91
00:25:01.740And damn, that bit really speaks to me because I totally get at this tension in this fracture that she is naming and exposing here.
00:25:13.660Yeah, and this is what it is to sit at intersectionality, right?0.98
00:25:17.440it's it's weird because sometimes as black women will or you know as a queer black woman i'll get
00:25:25.020the same question from black men like are you gonna put your gender or your queerness ahead0.98
00:25:31.640of your race which is a ridiculous question no matter who it's asked by because we don't get0.98
00:25:37.040to choose any of it none of it is a decision none of it can come one before the other or like it's0.70
00:25:43.160all equal. It's always present. And that's, it's infuriating to have to sometimes link up
00:25:50.880with people who are not understanding that intersectionality in an effort to make things
00:25:58.260better for, you know, a community that you're a part of. It's a lot of work. It's why we're all
00:26:04.140tired. I would also say if you're a white feminist and any of this is, you know, ringing out for you1.00
00:26:11.100To borrow a quote from a show that's had some of its own feminist issues, but, you know, desire to be free and not make a window in the wall of your own prison.
00:26:20.700OK, it's really weird to me anyway, to rely on a man to to speak up for your woman community.
00:26:37.160And honestly, I mean, like I got to give like major, major props and shouts to Mickey Kendall because she was doing the work of exposing these fair, the same kinds of very real deep fractures between black feminists and white feminists that you were just talking about.
00:26:51.660And I need to be like super clear here.1.00
00:26:54.420Mickey Kendall was doing this like important, necessary work of bringing these tough conversations to the forefront.
00:26:59.980And it is a shame that Twitter, as a platform, failed Kendall and all of these other women who really needed to have this conversation, failed them all by failing to provide a safe, secure platform to have this conversation about these very real fractures and how they show up in our communities, right?0.99
00:27:19.560I also think that white feminists really should have done a better job of digging into this conversation and taking accountability.0.98
00:27:27.940And it might have they done that, it might not have been left this like open wound for bad actors to swoop in and exploit.1.00
00:27:36.620But that is a common tactic of bad actors, trolls, extremists, whoever, when conversations require a little bit of like thoughtfulness or nuance or are just tough conversations to have.
00:29:04.600Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.0.98
00:29:08.820I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:29:13.600I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:29:21.200They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:29:25.100But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:29:28.540They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:29:32.180Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:29:39.960If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:29:46.860This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:29:59.020I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:30:06.160I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:32:58.240We are refusing to pay alimony or child support, which should not be celebrated and rewarded, but it should be shamed.
00:33:03.960Father's Day should not be about celebrating the role of fathers in the family, but about correcting it.
00:33:08.900It should not be celebrated in its current, in its present form.
00:33:11.760We are calling on all feminists and social justice warriors to join us in a campaign to redefine this disgustingly misogynistic holiday and Father's Day in its present form, if not entirely.
00:33:21.760we will be descending on twitter and tumblr to get this message out that the patriarchal holiday0.85
00:33:26.980has no place in our society so that's all bullshit right like this was them this was them trying to0.92
00:33:33.660seed their fake campaign right like like that is definitely not i mean you could probably almost0.98
00:33:39.080tell from the way that they've written it it's not it's not commentary written in seriousness0.53
00:33:44.980they're trying to mess with feminists and disrupt online feminist spaces i mean there's zero logic0.97
00:35:13.120And what sometimes happens is that people
00:35:15.220who either are skeptical of them or know that they're fake will tweet using the hashtag,
00:35:21.620calling it out or being like, can you believe this? And they might think that they're actually,
00:35:26.020you know, shedding light on it, but by engaging with it, they're actually just helping it grow.
00:35:30.900So whenever you see one of those hashtags that you're like, this seems sus, do not engage with
00:35:35.380it because nine times out of 10, you're just helping it get more visibility and helping it
00:35:39.320spread to more people. So the next part of that cycle is that it gets picked up in the press.
00:35:45.320In this case, first it was smaller right-wing blogs like The Daily Caller who wrote about it.
00:35:49.740And then it actually made its way to Fox News, and they had this to say about it.1.00
00:35:56.760Well, it started out as a joke, but the hashtag End Father's Day is picking up steam with feminists online and with others in social media.0.97
00:36:04.160Tweets like End Father's Day because it's a celebration of patriarchy and oppression have been popping up all over the place.0.98
00:37:34.120were alive and willing to go on these shows1.00
00:37:35.780so she could be like that's actually true when you crush men you do hurt women but not for the
00:37:41.320reasons you're thinking it's not about providing uh financially for people that we're emotionally0.58
00:37:46.720hurting men and we could be doing better as a community as a society ridiculous exactly and
00:37:53.320joelle very good eye because the the twitter the tweet that they showed belonged to twitter user0.52
00:37:59.740nay nay can't stop who if you go to that twitter profile now oh wait you can't because it's been
00:38:05.520suspended because it was a fake account they showed someone who is a known troll impersonating0.60
00:38:11.540a black woman to create chaos and confusion on social media platforms they showed that tweet
00:38:16.920not knowing or maybe i'm not even gonna say not knowing not caring to check to see whether or not0.62
00:38:23.240that was an actual person espousing their actual views just showing i mean just showing it to your
00:38:29.400nana and pop-up i wonder if there's because some of these people actually went to journalism school
00:38:34.440And you wonder if there's any, like, moment where there's just, like, deep regret or concern or, like, they have to know that the rest of the journalism community is just, like, beside themselves.
00:42:42.400Yes. And heard it as a child in church because I did wear a slip under my dress in church because I went to a Southern Baptist church.
00:42:53.180Exactly. So if a Black Southern lady tells you, oh, your slip is showing, basically what she's telling you is that you don't look as put together as you think that you do.
00:43:03.560And that is why Shafika Hudson used that phrase to weed out these people posing as Black women, right?0.71
00:43:10.800Like, you think that you're coming off as a black woman, but actually, your hashtag, your slip is showing.0.97
00:43:33.980And I think to me, the fact that a regular Twitter user like Shafika had to take it upon herself to do this work, like creating a hashtag, creating a whole list that she added to, doing that labor of making Twitter a safer platform, despite the fact that like she didn't work at Twitter, she was doing it completely unpaid at a time when she was actually between jobs.0.97
00:43:57.540it says a lot to me about the way that platforms like Twitter operate.
00:44:02.060You know, shouldn't tech leaders at places like Twitter want their platforms to be more secure?
00:44:07.300Shouldn't they be interested in not having their platforms be places where
00:44:10.720bad actors can completely hijack conversations?1.00
00:44:14.620You know, it should not be up to just regular Black women like Shafika Hudson1.00
00:44:19.000to do the work of making Twitter safer.0.60
00:44:21.400Yet, time and time again, that labor, which is often unpaid and often dangerous work, falls on the shoulders of just regular Black women because the powers that be do nothing when we are harmed.0.87
00:44:36.040Yeah, it absolutely shouldn't be anybody outside of getting a Twitter paycheck responsibility to keep its users safe.0.98
00:44:47.400That's foolish. But capitalism being what it is and these social media spaces making money the way they do.
00:44:56.900I mean, even YouTube, which has a pretty good system of like, here's how we make money.
00:45:01.460Here's how we pay out the users who create content for us.
00:45:05.540Still understands at the end of the day, it's down to videos watched and ads consumed.
00:45:10.160and because of that have no interest in people's safety because this sort of unrelegated wild west
00:45:16.300of post what you want let's create a lot of hate which is going to hopefully create more comments
00:45:22.080i mean it's weird because we're sort of seeing netflix tap into this too where they create these
00:45:26.900shows that are like mildly divisive if you think of like an emily in paris right emily in paris
00:45:33.800It has a pretty stacked cast, but it didn't cause that much to make.
00:45:38.020It's easy and fast to make, so they can turn that out.
00:45:41.980And if you hate it, all the better, because when you hate watch it, at least you're tweeting about it.
00:45:45.880At least you're giving that show promotion.
00:45:48.760At least you're spending more time on Netflix.
00:45:50.620And I think we're seeing this throughout our Internet landscape.
00:45:53.560You know, we're still in the infancy of the Internet, despite, you know, a lot of us grew up with it.
00:45:59.220I mean, I had the Internet since I was like four or five.
00:46:01.580I don't really recall a time without there being internet access available to me.
00:46:07.300And because of that, I think to a larger degree, because our government has not stepped in and decided to make any rules or structures or has made very limited rules and structures for how the internet is to be used.
00:46:17.540I think we're just going to keep conceding these things until something like that, until there's actual laws passed because it's financially, people are financially behooved to continue to allow this kind of negative reactions and interactions.
00:46:30.120I could not have put that better myself. And I think that at this point, what we really, first step is we need to acknowledge the way that this kind of hate as an engagement strategy on social media platforms, one, typically targets people who are traditionally marginalized.
00:46:48.420and two, just keeps us all locked into this same toxic engagement system of hate.
00:46:55.520The studies are super clear that people who use social media are not happier.
00:47:00.400It makes us all unhappy and that social media algorithms by design amplify content that
00:47:07.260makes us angrier, more polarized, more divided, and less informed.
00:47:12.600And so it's not doing any of us any good, but I'll tell you what it is doing.
00:47:16.840It is lining a lot of people's pockets.
00:47:18.420And I don't want to create, I don't want us to have an internet ecosystem and landscape where it's a marketplace for our pain, right?0.97
00:47:26.420Like, I don't want our negative experiences to just be lining the pockets of some asshole tech leader somewhere.0.97
00:47:34.400And the people, the young people who come behind us, the next generation, they don't deserve to have, you know, their negative experiences be weaponized and marketed and profited from in this callous way.
00:47:46.860Like we really need to think about what kind of internet landscape we want to
00:48:35.180When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.
00:48:40.420I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed
00:48:46.400them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low taunting
00:48:53.940voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything. Every week I'm with survivors who
00:49:01.560live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me. I
00:49:08.360I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:49:15.720They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:49:19.700But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:49:23.140They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:49:26.780Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:49:34.560If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:49:41.460This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:49:53.620I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:50:00.760I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:50:03.900From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:50:10.300It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:50:18.200Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:50:27.380Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:59:06.780And Twitter has confirmed that this was not the only account that they booted off of the platform for impersonating racial justice like demonstrators.0.99
00:59:17.180Donald Trump Jr. tweeted absolutely insane with a screenshot of that tweet.
00:59:22.840Just remember what Antifa really is, a terrorist organization.
00:59:27.640And this was the same, I think it's like the same day that Trump baselessly blamed Antifa, scare quotes, for violence that, you know, for like violence during protests.
00:59:39.660And, you know, I just think back to that and I think how long did we have to endure this ridiculous news cycle about like law and order and violence?
00:59:50.320And, like, it is very concerning that extremists are successfully able to dominate the national dialogue of, like, what the conversation is just by using these tactics on Twitter that Twitter is aware of.
01:00:05.540I would say that if bad actors can hijack our communication platforms in that way, these platforms are not secure and they're not safe and they're not really serving us.
01:00:14.680You know, what's super crazy is that, like, historically, this is the call, right?0.63
01:00:18.800Like they clearly know their audience, which is like, how do we scare white people?
01:00:24.640You know, no person of color is using the term white hood.0.61
01:00:28.840First of all, unless we're referring to KKK members like, oh, this is the white.0.81
01:00:34.140I was like, are you out of your mind?0.94
01:00:35.840But second of all, we understand clearly as black people in America that white people have this natural fear that white that black people are going to retaliate and create like white slavery.0.79
01:00:48.400It's a it's a narrative we've heard a lot. It's how a lot of lynchings take place.
01:00:53.500I mean, we can look as far back as Emmett Till and the fact that he whistled at a white woman and that was considered a threat because a 12 year old boy whistled, whistled, a thing we know didn't happen at a white woman.
01:01:04.800And so for them to tap all the way back into that fear, even today on social media to say, hey, they're going to come into your neighborhoods and like shake things up.
01:01:13.580It's it's frustrating and kind of horrifying to still think about just your your blackness, just your presence being a threat.
01:01:24.920And again, you know, as we've been articulating throughout the episode, every time that's stated, it's it causes us to have to be extra defensive, extra alert for ourselves and for our direct community, because we don't know who's going to take, again, just our presence as a threat and then act on that threat.0.62
01:01:42.200Exactly. I think it was Toni Morrison who said that the business of racism is like creating a situation where you can't get anything done because you're so busy defending yourself and defending your blackness and like showing up defensive that you then can't do the good work that you want to do.
01:01:58.360You can't put your energy towards something else. And I think that's exactly what is happening here, that these bad actors and trolls and extremists are able to create the conditions where folks like you and me, just like regular black folks, are put in a situation where we have to constantly be defending ourselves against the backdrop of a complete fabrication, right?
01:02:18.540Like a black activist didn't tweet that a white supremacist did.
01:02:21.920And so I'm having to defend myself against something, against a caricature that a white supremacist dreamed up on my behalf that I had nothing to do with.
01:02:30.220Yeah. And then we see the real life percussions, not only so not only the emotional and mental toil online, but then, you know, when we're out in the streets protesting for our goddamn lives, then all of a sudden, again, just our presence of being in the street, even if it's a peaceful protest.0.89
01:02:46.080It's lost to me the difference in police presence where I went to the women's march where too many people had on that stupid pussy hat.0.99
01:02:53.580And the police presence there, soups calm.1.00
01:02:56.620Just lots of daughters hanging out, totally fine, whatever.
01:03:00.940You know, if you were at any of the early Black Lives Matter rallies, if you marched for George Floyd or anything like that, you saw a stark difference in how you were just being treated for doing the exact same action.
01:03:14.460And I think a lot of it is like this fear-mongering that we saw on social media spilling into real life.
01:03:21.860These are sensitive conversations that involve very real hot-button issues that are super raw for many of us.
01:03:29.800And the fact that our social media platforms are so easily exploited and hijacked by extremists and bad actors
01:03:36.020to completely derail these conversations is a problem with very big implications.
01:03:41.180In the case of End Father's Day, many of the people reporting on it, you know, journalists, they talked about it like the 4chan trolls behind the hoax were just joking, you know, just trolling.
01:03:52.900But Black feminists, they knew it wasn't a joke because they could see what was at stake and they could probably see down the line what was going to happen next.
01:04:01.680When it comes to online harms, it's always marginalized people who are harmed first.1.00
01:04:05.980First, it's our problem and nothing is done because nobody takes Black women seriously.
01:04:10.220and then it is everyone's problem.1.00
01:04:13.000Back in 2014, it was just destabilizing1.00
01:04:37.500And by the time folks are listening to this episode, it will be election day.
01:04:42.860Elon Musk is blowing up verification on Twitter and gutting the teams that actually exist on the platform to try to make some kind of headway into making those platforms safer.
01:06:22.120and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
01:06:27.920I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
01:06:31.300Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
01:06:39.080These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
01:06:42.900Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:06:50.800If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
01:06:56.240Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
01:07:04.900Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.